That comparison ignored the part where MIT (the University) screwed the deal.
Things are changing, but startup in MA are playing hard-mode and don't get any extra points for doing so.
The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
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Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#12That comparison ignored the part where MIT (the University) screwed the deal. Things are changing, but startup in MA are playing hard-mode and don't get any extra points for doing so.
Don't get it twisted—the MIT Startup is still based in SFBA
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#13As true today as it was back then. At MIT the atmosphere is around hard tech startups. That's even what the MIT accelerator specializes in https://engine.xyz/
Author. Anantha Chandrakasan mentioned this essay at a launch event for The Engine. He was my boss when I was a TA :)
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#14The article names its archetypes not entirely fairly, based on my experience at three MIT startups. Two were novel-tech academic spinoffs, and the third was alumni applying/integrating COTS tech driven by customer problem domain. Of those three, two were business-thinking much like the article's "Stanford" archetype. The other had, like the article's "MIT" archetype, a period to develop tech from the lab, and a challenging changing of gears to be cutting-edge product-driven.
Also, a fourth MIT startup, which I recently almost co-founded, even before I joined the nascent team, the inventor-CEO had already done impressive customer-oriented legwork, and found Bay Area advisors, more like "Stanford" in the article.
> The team has 9 PhDs and just hired an MBA to start finding customers.
This is a problem, if none of the PhDs happen to have non-academic strong experience in product, nor in industry team engineering.
An academic environment will tend to make people think they know more than they do, about things academia doesn't know.
Also, academic degree and career paths in some ways reward the opposite of how I think people in a startup, or other effective company, should be thinking. (Unless the startup is more the VC growth investment scheme kind, which can be mostly about appearances.)
One MBA (even if very experienced) probably can't, by themself, counterbalance all those experience gaps, nor those lessons to unlearn.
> The MIT startup has no sales to customers, but possibly a DARPA grant to develop their technology.
I don't know about the more involved DARPA grant-writing, but SBIRs do seem to be popular seed-ish funding: https://www.sbir.gov/
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#15Intellectual property generated at universities that accept any taxpayer funding whatsoever should belong to the taxpayer, meaning any US citizen should automatically have access to that IP under a free non-exclusive license. If you don't like this, tell the billionaires to go back to funding private research centers (e.g. Bell Labs) and they can own all the IP generated there outright. Otherwise, it's just a ripoff…
> Intellectual property generated at universities that accept any taxpayer funding whatsoever should belong to the taxpayer
Not everything generated at a university that takes tax money is government owned, but everything the government funds is available to the government.
> private research centers (e.g. Bell Labs)
Companies like Google or Apple have been funding tons of research. I worked for a government research lab doing medical research. The research being done for the Apple Watch was miles better than ours, because it had way more funding.
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#16As true today as it was back then. At MIT the atmosphere is around hard tech startups. That's even what the MIT accelerator specializes in https://engine.xyz/
Author. Anantha Chandrakasan mentioned this essay at a launch event for The Engine. He was my boss when I was a TA :)
Does the article draw on “worse is better” ? https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#17The article names its archetypes not entirely fairly, based on my experience at three MIT startups. Two were novel-tech academic spinoffs, and the third was alumni applying/integrating COTS tech driven by customer problem domain. Of those three, two were business-thinking much like the article's "Stanford" archetype. The other had, like the article's "MIT" archetype, a period to develop tech from the lab, and a chall…
And Google is a pretty good counter-example to “The Stanford startup has developed no new technology”
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#18Avoid being a cliche by hustling and bring something awesome with tech too. The two aren't mutex.
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#19I don't know why, but as a non-American, this seems to be more of a Nerd vs Jock kinda thing. Am I correct in my interpretation?
Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)
#20Intellectual property generated at universities that accept any taxpayer funding whatsoever should belong to the taxpayer, meaning any US citizen should automatically have access to that IP under a free non-exclusive license. If you don't like this, tell the billionaires to go back to funding private research centers (e.g. Bell Labs) and they can own all the IP generated there outright. Otherwise, it's just a ripoff…
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